The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephone networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication has recently become an area of interest for its growth potential. M2M communication is also exciting to many users and developers for its potential for connecting devices for many different purposes such as smart homes, smart metering, fleet management, remote healthcare, access network operation management and numerous other uses.
M2M communication typically involves the connection of a device or group of devices to a remote server or computer system to enable remote measurement or remote reporting of information. In some cases, M2M communication involves the use of one or more sensors or other nodes or devices to gather information that can be passed to a network or computing device via some form of gateway device. Recently, mobile terminals such as cellular phones have been employed as the gateway device in order to enable remote devices or sensors to provide information to a central location or a network for processing. In some cases, the network may be the Internet or some more localized computing network.
The use of cellular communication systems in M2M applications has been advantageous due to the wide coverage areas that are currently provided by cellular communication systems. Typical endpoint devices in an M2M communication system are relatively small battery operated devices with relatively low transmission power capabilities. Thus, by interfacing with nearby mobile terminals that can connect to a cellular communication system, the endpoint devices may be able to operate at low power and still provide information to remote computing or storage devices via a mobile terminal acting as a gateway to, for example, a cellular network access point. While the connection between the gateway and the access point in such situations is provided by cellular network resources, the connection between the gateway and the endpoint device may be some other short range communication radio (e.g., short range radios employing Bluetooth, WLAN and/or the like). Thus, two radios may be required for some M2M applications. In some other applications where direct cellular communication is provided between the access point and the endpoint devices, such devices are typically not small battery operated devices, but instead are larger more powerful machines.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to provide additional alternatives to the existing M2M communication regimes.